Patton and War Crimes

[PanzerJaeger]

all in all america's fighting men performed far more humanely than the japanese.

Not true. The Marines - fueled by a government sponsored dehumanization campaign - put even the Rape of Nanking to shame in the way they conducted the war. Now we're constantly told how virtually no Japanese soldier surrendered. One of the most under-reported aspects of the war.

[Subedei]

Ain´t Patton and war crimes the topic here? I was really interested in the opinions about him.

[Strike For The South]

Not true. The Marines - fueled by a government sponsored dehumanization campaign - put even the Rape of Nanking to shame in the way they conducted the war. Now we're constantly told how virtually no Japanese soldier surrendered. One of the most under-reported aspects of the war.

I know an 87 year old man whom disagrees with you, Hans

[PanzerJaeger]

I know an 87 year old man whom disagrees with you, Hans

I'm starting to feel like a broken record. The information is all out there.

[Sarmatian]

Excuse me, PJ, but are you trying to say that there was no difference between Allies/Soviets and Nazis? If so, you really shouldn't bother...

[Centurion1]

Not true. The Marines - fueled by a government sponsored dehumanization campaign - put even the Rape of Nanking to shame in the way they conducted the war. Now we're constantly told how virtually no Japanese soldier surrendered. One of the most under-reported aspects of the war.

Are you attempting to take a **** on my family history. And even if they did shoot prisoners that is NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING like physically raping thousands of women and killing thousands more civilians. And how about Japanese POW camps, real human those places.

You are agruing a totally bogus point by trying to match a cucumber with a zucchini.

[PanzerJaeger]

Excuse me, PJ, but are you trying to say that there was no difference between Allies/Soviets and Nazis? If so, you really shouldn't bother...

Don't you think you should separate the Western Allies from the Soviets?

Are you attempting to take a **** on my family history.

I'm attempting to depict history accurately, which, surprisingly, doesn't always fall in line with The Sands of Iwo Jima.

And even if they did shoot prisoners that is NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING like physically raping thousands of women and killing thousands more civilians.

The irony is staggering. How can you take such offence and be so clueless at the same time?

Still, the villagers' tale of a dark, long-kept secret has refocused attention on what historians say is one of the most widely ignored crimes of the war, the widespread rape of Okinawan women by American servicemen.

Ah, but they didn't just rape civilians and shoot prisoners. They also ripped the gold fillings out of their heads - alive or dead. They tore them limb from limb for souvenirs. They traded Japanese ears amongst themselves for cigarettes and chocolates. They decapitated Japanese POWs with their bayonets, boiled their skulls and sent them home to their mothers and girlfriends. These actions were common and widely accepted by both grunts and officers. Do I need to make another thread?

Now, I’m sorry your American History classes have failed you in this respect, but please refrain from further righteous indignation until you figure out what really happened.

Furthermore the Japanese never actually committed any war crimes because they never signed on for the Geneva Convention rights anyhow, amirite?

You may want to consider returning to lurking.

[Brenus]

“Don't you think you should separate the Western Allies from the Soviets?” No.
Well-done PZ.
About US killings and all the others things you describe, we know the US (and others) soldiers were not exempt of cruelty. If you just watch the treatment by the US media of that time concerning the Japanese you’ve got a clue…
However, nothing match in the Allies side (including Soviet) the horrors started and launched by the Nazi and their Japanese allies…
You successfully try to twist history and I admire the job. You just illustrate what was my research when I was in University: How to modify a perception of an historical event in a manner that fits our view. You have your representation (allies = nazi, so nazi not sooo guilty if not guilty at all…).
I do enjoy this..

[Centurion1]

PJ im not saying that the US always did the correct thing. But compared to the Japanese they were far better and the same applies to the nazis as well.

i dont know how you can defend this

[PanzerJaeger]

You have your representation (allies = nazi, so nazi not sooo guilty if not guilty at all…).

Your words, not mine.

While I did find your thesis entertaining, it is not particularly correct. I started this thread because I was asked about the topic in another thread and I felt it deviated too much from what was being discussed there. I do not believe I have mentioned Nazis or Germans yet, except incidentally in the original post.

I understand that the subject of Allied war crimes makes many people uncomfortable. It doesn't fit into the post-war narrative we were all taught in school. However, if you or anyone else has a problem with what has been said, I suggest you take it up with the historical record, instead of trying to paint me as on some sort of one man Nazi vindication campaign.

I would much rather be talking tanks and battles and such, but if people are going to make declarative statements based on 6th grade truisms like "our boys would never rape civilians" that are patently false, then I will address them accordingly.

It is funny. There are countless books, documentaries, etc. documenting Nazi and Japanese crimes during the war. I believe there was even a thread about the Wehrmacht's crimes here in the monastery a few months back. No one’s denying them. However, when that same spotlight is turned on the Allies' conduct, hostility arises. I must have some sort of revisionist agenda to even bring it up!

PJ im not saying that the US always did the correct thing. But compared to the Japanese they were far better and the same applies to the nazis as well.

i dont know how you can defend this

And I'm not sure how you can still make that statement after reading the information I shared earlier. Let me find you some more information.

Possibly, but neither were nowhere near as bad as Nazis or the Japanese.

Can you expand on this a bit in regard to the Soviets? I'm trying to think of the worst things the Nazis did off the top of my head, and everything I can think of was either comparably duplicated by the Soviets or even worse.

Unfortunately, cruelty is a part of war. There hasn't been a war without it and there hasn't been an army that hasn't committed some cruel acts. The degree varies but it was never institutionalized like it was within the Wehrmacht and the Japanese army. It has never happened in the entire history of the world. And, no, Aztecs or some African tribes are not a valid comparison.

I completely disagree. It might work if you replaced "institutionalized" with "industrialized", but you certainly don't have to look back as far as the Aztecs to find widespread institutional cruelty and war crimes in human history.

Now, on the other hand, you haven't answered the question - Do you believe that there is no difference between Allies or Soviets and the Nazis or Japanese?

I appreciate the interest, but I don't think my personal beliefs have any bearing on a historical discussion.

[Sarmatian]

Don't you think you should separate the Western Allies from the Soviets?

Possibly, but neither were nowhere near as bad as Nazis or the Japanese.

Unfortunately, cruelty is a part of war. There hasn't been a war without it and there hasn't been an army that hasn't committed some cruel acts. The degree varies but it was never institutionalized like it was within the Wehrmacht and the Japanese army. It has never happened in the entire history of the world. And, no, Aztecs or some African tribes are not a valid comparison.

Now, on the other hand, you haven't answered the question - Do you believe that there is no difference between Allies or Soviets and the Nazis or Japanese?

[The Lurker Below]

Not true. The Marines - fueled by a government sponsored dehumanization campaign - put even the Rape of Nanking to shame in the way they conducted the war. Now we're constantly told how virtually no Japanese soldier surrendered. One of the most under-reported aspects of the war.

Furthermore the Japanese never actually committed any war crimes because they never signed on for the Geneva Convention rights anyhow, amirite?
/sarcasm

[The Wizard]

Quite, actually. Many a soldier fought for their state simply out of loyalty. The most famous example would be Mr. Lee, who Centurion has already pointed out. Lincoln himself was rather racist, although quite a moderate given his contemparies, and his goal was to strengthen the North, not to free slaves. Not to say that race wasn't an issue, but most Northerners fought because the South just seceded from the USA. The South obviously found the loss in plantation revenue alarming, but the poor white workers with no land didn't have much to do with that.

A passage with the quotes from letters written by a Union soldier may serve to illustrate the contrary...

Like hundreds of thousands of other Americans, Marcus M. Spiegel volunteered in 1861 to fight in the Civil War. Born into a Jewish family in Germany in 1829, Spiegel took part in the failed German revolution of 1848. In the following year he emigrated to Ohio, where he married the daughter of a local farmer. When the Civil War broke out, the nation's 150,000 Jews represented less than 1 percent of the total population. But Spiegel shared wholeheartedly in American patriotism. He went to war, he wrote to his brother-in-law, to defend "the flag that was ever ready to protect you and me and every one who has sought its protection from oppression."

Spiegel rose to the rank of colonel in the 120th Ohio Infantry and saw action in Virginia, Mississippi and Louisiana. He corresponded frequently with his wife, Caroline. "I have seen and learned much," he wrote in 1863. "I have seen men dying of disease and mangled by the weapons of the death; I have witnessed hostile armies arrayed against each other, the charge of infantry, [and] cavalry hunting men down like beasts." But he never wavered in his commitment to the "glorious cause" of preserving the Union and its heritage of freedom.

What one Pennsylvania recruit called "the magic word Freedom" shaped how many Union soldiers understood the conflict. The war's purpose, wrote Samuel McIlvane, a sergeant from Indiana, was to preserve the American nation as "the beacon light of liberty and freedom to the human race." But as the war progressed, prewar understandings of liberty gave way to something new. Millions of northerners who had not been abolitionists became convinced that preserving the Union as an embodiment of liberty required the destruction of slavery.

Marcus Spiegel's changing views mirrored the transformation of a struggle to save the Union into a war to end slavery. Spiegel was an ardent Democrat. He shared the era's racist attitudes and thought Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation a serious mistake. Yet as the Union army penetrated the heart of the Deep South, Spiegel became increasingly opposed to slavery. "Since I am here," he wrote to his wife from Louisiana in January 1864, "I have learned and seen . . . the horrors of slavery. You know it takes me long to say anything that sounds antidemocratic [opposed to Democratic Party policies], but . . . never hereafter will I either speak or vote in favor of slavery."

Marcus Spiegel was killed in a minor engagement in Louisiana in May 1864, one of 620,000 Americans to perish in the Civil War.

(Taken from Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! An American History, Volume I (New York 2009), p. 480-482)

Not true. The Marines - fueled by a government sponsored dehumanization campaign - put even the Rape of Nanking to shame in the way they conducted the war. Now we're constantly told how virtually no Japanese soldier surrendered. One of the most under-reported aspects of the war.

...

No comment. No ******* comment. This is too outrageously ridiculous a claim to even take seriously. Your unrelenting and utterly misguided crusade to make the Allies as black as the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese continues, to the hilarity of all. Try telling that to any of the victims of Nanjing. Or any professional historian of any merit whatsoever. Take a shot. See what happens, champ.

I'm starting to feel like a broken record. The information is all out there.

Oh, but you are, chum, you are.

[Lemur]

Not true. The Marines [...] put even the Rape of Nanking to shame in the way they conducted the war.

You post unsupported tripe like this, and you wonder why this thread is an explosion of hostility toward your position? Good lord, man. It's one thing to point out that some Marines committed war crimes, it's quite another to equate their behavior with that of the Japanese Empire.

Out of curiosity, based on your history of posting, why is equating the behavior of Axis and Allied soldiers such a consistent PJ theme? Did you have a great-grandfather in the Wehrmacht or something? The way this keeps coming up, it seems as though there's some sort of personal motive.